Nicky Hopkins: The Legendary Ivory-Tickler

By Steven P. Wheeler

On the 25^th anniversary of his tragic passing at the age of 50 due to complications from intestinal surgery, I’ve pulled out my old tapes from two interviews with this member of rock royalty. Nicky Hopkins was a true legend whose remarkable and unmistakable piano work graced some of the greatest songs in music history, and that is not hyperbole.

Always humble and unassuming, when I pointed out during one of our interviews that he was the only musician to have worked with British rock’s three most famous bands—The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who—he simply paused for a moment and said, “I guess that’s true. Interesting thought. Wave the flags, boys.”

Nicky’s credits and career are unparalleled among session musicians. The Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Jeff Beck Group, Rod Stewart, Joe Cocker, the list is endless. Hell, the guy even played Woodstock with Jefferson Airplane. But his immortal legacy also included work outside the rock world, including playing with seemingly everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Willie Nelson. He even played with Spinal Tap bringing a reality to their parodies, not surprising given Nicky’s wit and his well-known love of Monty Python.

While I can only scratch the surface of his illustrious career, I’ve also included some personal anecdotes of spending some personal time with the quiet man from Middlesex, England, both in the recording studio and out.

The Early Days

The son of an accountant, Nicky received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in 1955, where he was ingrained with classical music for five years, from the age of 11 to 16. But rock & roll snagged his attention at the age 15 and by the following year, in 1960, the prodigy was on the road with Screaming Lord Sutch, Britain’s original “shock rocker” before that term ever existed.

“In 1960, I started with Screaming Lord Sutch,” Hopkins told me, “and what happened was that the drummer, Carlo Little, and I who were with Sutch, later joined the Cyril Davies All-Stars, which was quite a big band. Cyril was the foremost blues artist in England and I got quite a reputation playing in that band.

“In fact, the Stones were our support act back in ’62 and ’63 and that’s how I first got to know them. But we didn’t run into each other much in those days because they were on the road a lot and they were also recording at RCA/Victor Studios in Hollywood, and that was long before I ever came over here to America. Their first album was recorded in England, but after that they were recording in the States.”

Just as his reputation was growing throughout the London music industry, Hopkins early career came to a life-threatening halt. Always suffering from illness during his childhood, he was hospitalized for more than a year, ultimately losing his gall bladder, a kidney, and suffering a collapsed lung as well.

“Nobody in the world ever played piano like Nicky Hopkins—the way he played chords. A piano is a piano, and the keys are the keys, and the chords are chords, but one individual can make that same piano sound so different from another person and Nicky embodied that whole thing, man. Nicky played like nobody else. Nicky always sounded like he was in a cloud somewhere. His playing was astonishingly beautiful. He always elevated everybody.”

Legendary session drummer Jim Keltner

The Sessions Begin

After two years, his career was kick-started again in 1965 when his former Sutch mate, drummer Carlo Little offered him a session gig after the scheduled pianist had called in sick right before the recording session. Eager to get working again, Hopkins stepped up and when he walked in the studio there was future legendary producer Glyn Johns handling the recording engineer duties, future Led Zeppelin founder Jimmy Page was producing the session, and some guy named Jeff Beck was playing guitar. “It was quite a session,” Hopkins recalled with a laugh.

“It was for some song that never saw the light of day, but what happened at the end of the session was that Jimmy Page said, ‘Do you guys want to do a jam? I’ll give all of you an acetate of it.’ And we thought, ‘Great, we’ll play and get a copy of whatever we do.’

“So we jammed for about half-an-hour but we never got an acetate, and then about three years later the thing came out on some anthology called The Best of the British Blues, which came out on RCA/Victor. That was quite interesting to see that go down. No royalties on that one,” he noted. Something that the future session superstar would grow used to, reluctantly.

“But what happened is that from that session,” Hopkins explained, “Glyn was responsible for putting me in touch with Shel Talmy, who was producing The Kinks and The Who, and that’s how I started working with them, and things just sort of snowballed from there. I became the most sought after keyboard player in England.”

Kinks’ singer-songwriter Ray Davies said of Nicky shortly after his death in 1994: “Nicky, unlike lesser musicians, didn’t try to show off; he would only play when necessary. But he had the ability to turn an ordinary track into a gem–slotting in the right chord at the right time or dropping a set of triplets around the back beat, just enough to make you want to dance. On a ballad, he could sense which notes to wrap around the song without being obtrusive. He managed to give ‘Days,’ for instance, a mysterious religious quality without being sentimental or pious.”

For his part, when I asked about how he became such an in-demand talent, he would only say: “There were a few piano players in England at the time who could play rock & roll, but they didn’t have the music theory background that I had and they couldn’t read charts and they had no formal musical training like I had. So I was able to take on all sorts of work. Bands in those days could never write down chord charts, and I was able to come up with things very quickly. I got a name for doing that within a few years.”

Enter the Stones

So in demand was Hopkins by 1966 that he was inked to his own record deal and released his first solo album The Revolutionary Piano of Nicky Hopkins, featuring his twist on hit songs from all over the musical map.

In 1967, Olympic Studios in London became the first eight-track studio in England and the Rolling Stones began recording in their homeland after so many years making records in America. Soon enough, Hopkins got the call from the Stones as they were recording Their Satanic Majesties Request. These first sessions would lead to Hopkins becoming a vital musical force as part of the Rolling Stones for more than a decade, including three tours and countless albums and sessions.

“The first thing I ever recorded with them was a song called ‘We Love You,’ recalled Hopkins. “There’s a piano riff that starts the song off and goes all the way through it, and I had that riff going around in my head for about three weeks before I started working with them. And, at one point, in the studio, I was just sitting at the piano and I started playing that riff and Mick and Keith came over and said, ‘Hey, that’s great. Keep playing that. Now take it up to B and back down to A and up to E,’ and so on.

“So we got the chord structure that way and then later on they added a top melody and words. So my input with the Stones happened all different ways.”

“Revolution”

Ironically, “We Love You” also included some backing vocals from Paul McCartney and John Lennon from that other band. And within a year, the Fab Four called on Hopkins to play some electric piano on their next single, the electrifying “Revolution.” Hopkins’ solo in the blistering rocker is one for the books.

“That’s what was so great about those days is that the musicians would all hangout together in the studios,” Hopkins maintains. “You never knew who would be around from day to day. And as a result of that Stones session, John called me the following year in ‘68 to play on the fast, electric version of ‘Revolution,’ which they were going to release as a single.

And they were all pleased with what I did on that song, and then John said, ‘We have lots more work. Do you fancy doing some?’ Of course I said, ‘Yeah, that’d be great.’ But he never called [laughs].” More on that later.

Having worked with both the Stones and the Beatles, I asked about whether the rumors of a serious competition between the two bands was true. “No, not at all. In fact, it was quite the opposite,” he said. “They hung out quite a lot and supported each other. A lot of people think that after the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper that the Stones tried to do the same thing with Satanic Majesties, and that they were trying to outdo each other.

“It wasn’t that,” he continued. “I think people were just moving in various new directions because of the particular drugs they were taking. I mean, there was a lot of LSD flying around at that time [laughs].”

Coming to America

While working on the Stones’ two most legendary albums of the ’60s—Beggar’s Banquet (including the “We are deeply indebted to Nicky Hopkins” message on the sleeve) and Let It Bleed—Hopkins also turned down Jimmy Page’s offer to join his new band Led Zeppelin and after working with the Jeff Beck Group on the immortal Truth album, Hopkins briefly joined that band instead in early ’69 recording the epic Beck-Ola featuring his beautiful instrumental “Girl From Mill  Valley.”

Following a few months of touring the U.S., Beck abruptly disbanded the group. Vocalist Rod Stewart and bassist Ronnie Wood would join The Faces, and Hopkins would relocate to the Bay Area of California amidst the remnants of the Summer of Love, which took place a few years previous.

“I came here to do some work with Steve Miller in the middle of ’69, who was working with Glyn Johns at the time. I was only supposed to be there for two or three weeks and then I was supposed to join back up with the Stones, but I told them I just couldn’t leave San Francisco,” Nicky said with a laugh. “That little stay lasted about seven-and-a-half years.”

Woodstock

At that time, Hopkins also hooked up with the quintessential Bay Area band of that era, Jefferson Airplane, on their hit album Volunteers. Then in August of that year, he joined the Airplane onstage for a little gig known as Woodstock.

“Oh yeah, that was amazing,” he recalled. “It was incredible. I didn’t know what it was before we went, I just heard that it was gonna be some big concert on the East Coast. There had been other big concerts, but this was to be the biggest. What none of us knew was that it was still going to be talked about all these years later.

A little over three months later, the positive vibes of Woodstock would be wiped out by the insanity and murder that occurred at Altamont where the Stones and the Airplane performed. “Interestingly enough, I was going to play at Altamont a couple of months later because I didn’t live too far from there,” Hopkins explained, “but something held me back; very strange.”

Much in demand, Hopkins then joined another Northern California psychedelic band. This time it was with Quicksilver Messenger Service for two albums, which were often dominated by Hopkins’ keyboards, most prominently on the epic, “Edward, the Mad Shirt Grinder.”

Of his three solo albums, Hopkins said: “The Revolutionary Piano album did quite well in England in ‘66. The second one, The Tin Man Was a Dreamer, did even better in ‘72, but the next one No More Changes wasn’t a great record. It was a dreadful record that came out in ’75. It was not a good time for me and it was made under the effect of too many drugs.”

John Lennon

Then in ’71, I went back to England, and John Lennon called me to come work on the Imagine album. John came out and met me because we recorded it at his house, Tittenhurst Park, out in the country. And I said, ‘What ever happened back in ’68? You said you guys had a lot more work, but you never called.’ And he said, ‘We all figured you were just too busy with the Stones to bother’ [laughs].”

“John was a great guy. I mean, he was fallible, he was human and he had his problems but he was a great dreamer. He had great visions of how he would ideally conceive the world to be and I considered him to be a spokesman for me and, of course, millions of other people.”

Nicky Hopkins (Interview by Steven P. Wheeler)

After having arrived after not seeing each other since the “Revolution” sessions three years previously, Hopkins makes clear that he didn’t see any major changes in the former Beatle. “I can’t say that I saw any real changes in John between the time of the Beatles and when we hooked up again for the Imagine album.

“To me, John was a great guy. I mean, he was fallible, he was human and he had his problems but he was a great dreamer. He had great visions of how he would ideally conceive the world to be and I considered him to be a spokesman for me and, of course, millions of other people. He was the one who got up there and said what we were all feeling and it was great.

“The author L. Ron Hubbard once said: ‘A culture is only as great as its dreams and those dreams are dreamed by artists.’ And I thought that really summed up John Lennon because he really did dream for all of us.

“I have very, very fond memories of John. He worked very quickly in the studio, which is how I like to work, and he did it with no sacrifice to the quality of the work. He was just able to get things done properly in a record amount of time.

“When he moved to New York at the end of 1971, I came over to play on his ‘Happy Xmas (War is Over)’ single and I said to him, ‘Why did you move to New York?’ because, to me, it was always such an intense and fast city. I always found it difficult to be there for more than a couple of weeks. And he just said, ‘It’s the only place that I’ve found that can keep up with me.’ And he was not joking, he was serious, and it all made sense to me. Working with John was definitely a highlight of my career.”

“Who’s Next”

In between the Imagine sessions and the ‘Happy Xmas’ single, Hopkins also worked on one of the greatest rock albums in history, The Who’s Who’s Next. “The thing about The Who was that Pete Townshend would come in the studio with a finished acetate of whatever song that he had done at his home studio. And the version done by The Who would turn out either slightly better or slightly worse than what Pete had done in his home studio by himself.”

Having played on so many classic albums, the question I had for Nicky was whether or not, he knew these sessions were truly that special at the time. “There are times when I do realize just how magical an album is going to be during the sessions,” he said. ” There are times when I do realize just how magical an album is going to be during the sessions. I certainly felt that with Beggar’s Banquet and Let It Bleed, and on ‘Revolution’ and on John’s albums Imagine and Walls & Bridges and ‘Happy Xmas,’ and also with Who’s Next. It really was obvious that they were going to be huge albums. How could that not? [laughs].

Rolling Stoned

In 1971, Nicky was back with the Stones for a few cuts on Sticky Fingers, and the following year he was living with the band during the famous Exile on Main Street sessions and he would become a sixth member of the group by joining them on three tours from 1971-73.

His longtime health issues brought his touring with the Stones to an end, but he would continue to record with them throughout the rest of the ‘70s adding his unmistakable majestic talents to such hits as “Angie,” “Time Waits for No One,” “Fool to Cry” and “Waiting on a Friend.”

During those infamous tours with the Stones, the question arises as to how accurate those tales of debaunchery truly are: “At that time, it really was like being an official member of the band. I was either in the studio or on tour with them, so it really was like that.

“I wouldn’t say that all those stories have been blown out of proportion, although it’s bound to get exaggerated somewhat,” he revealed. “But there was a lot of strange people that would always be around the band and come on the road and that was a hard element to deal with. Posers, lots of posers were around in those days.

“You Are So Beautiful”

Throughout his work with the Stones, Hopkins was still playing sessions constantly with other artists and his magic touch helped create hit after hit after hit. Probably most memorable is the stunning duet between Nicky and Joe Cocker on the classic ballad, “You Are So Beautiful.”

“Every time I hear Joe Cocker’s ‘You Are So Beautiful’ I want to cry before Joe’s vocals even come in. People try to emulate that piano piece, but there’s only one person could have played that… Nicky Hopkins.”  

Peter Frampton

“That was a memorable session,” Hopkins said in a massive understatement. “My work with Joe Cocker would have to be at the top of my list, because he’s such a wonderful guy and we had so great times together. It’s great to see him today because he looks so great and he sounded great, and it’s great to see him having so much success all these years later.

“I would love to do something with Joe again, but I don’t see how that’s possible because he’s had Chris Stainton with him for the past 15 years and they work well together.”

Although their collaboration brought Cocker back into the spotlight with that classic track, when Nicky joined Cocker on his 1977 tour, their boozing reached new heights as the pianist explained: “Joe wasn’t do good at that time and quite honestly neither was I. Some people thought we were having some sort of competition [laughs], it’s just that we were both so out of it in those days we used to hang out all the time.

“Plus, [notorious partier and Stones’ sax player] Bobby Keys was with us too. Apparently we toured Australia and New Zealand and South America for like six weeks I think. At least, people told us we did [laughs]. It was a good time actually. I do remember some of it.”

The List Goes On

Here are just a few of some more memorable Nicky performances from the ’70s…

The Final Years

In the years before his untimely death in 1994, Nicky continued session work with the likes of Paul McCartney, Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, Gary Moore, Jack Bruce, Graham Parker and also took part in the Jefferson Airplane’s reunion album. In addition, shortly before his death, he broke into the world of scoring for television with three soundtrack albums released in Japan.

My Nicky Memories

I had the good fortune of getting to know Nicky quite well in the last year or so of his abbreviated life. Interviewed him twice and also invited him to be a judge with me at a “Battle of the Bands” type contest in Hermosa Beach. That was a good day as it was cool for him to get some face-to-face feedback from fans after his introduction, which I scribbled down quickly for the emcee.

When they realized that a member of rock royalty was in their midst, with his incredible and endless credits, the bands (who weren’t all that great, by the way) wanted to talk with him after the show.

Then, and this is my GREATEST memory of Nicky. I hesitantly asked him to play on a session for a band that I was managing who were signed to SRC Records (an affiliate label through Zoo/BMG) at the time in the early 90s.

I remember him in the studio listening to the six-minute track, “Desolation Unknown,” an Allman Brothers-ish rock ballad, for the first time. We had planned on him adding some simple organ textures. After hearing the tune for the first time, he said in his English lilt, “Do you mind if I try something on piano instead?”

We were like, “Um, sure, whatever you think.”

Nicky left the booth went out behind the glass and sat at the piano, gave a nod, and as the tape rolled, he began playing on the first take. It didn’t take long until we were staring at each other, going, “Oh my god!” His piano parts LITERALLY made it sound as if we had added an orchestra to the track.

After that first take, we were all clapping and saying, “Wow, that’s amazing, Nicky, thanks.” But he didn’t get up from the piano, and just said, “Let me try it again.”

The producer said, “Let me save that one, give me a second.” To our disbelief, Nicky quietly replied, “No need, erase it. Just let me do it again.”

We were mumbling to ourselves in the booth, “Damn, that was perfect, we should really save it.”

Meanwhile the producer had already started the playback for the second take, and this time Nicky brought in his amazing goosebump-inducing “ivory teardrop fills” in just the right places and it was truly a 1,000 percent improvement over the previous take which we had already felt was incredible.

Our singer-songwriter then pressed the talk-back button and asked him to do a piano solo that might replace the current guitar solo. Nicky listened to the guitar solo again and said, “Why would you want to remove that? That’s a brilliant solo. Really, don’t mess with it.”

I’ll never forget the smile on our guitarist’s face when he heard that. He was beaming up on Cloud 9, courtesy of the greatest compliment a musician can ever hear coming as it did from the man who had played with the greatest guitarists in rock music history.

I still remember to this very day the musical nirvana that made the hair on my arms stand on end as I witnessed Nicky play that second take. And I am getting them again as I listen to that song while writing this. The greatest 15 musical minutes I ever experienced in a recording studio, and outside as well.

Then, from the piano bench, Nicky humbly asked: “Got anything else?” We played him a barroom, tongue-in-cheek rocker called, “Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet,” and Nicky loved the lyrics and said, “Let it roll.”

Nicky brought out his other artistic side with some rollicking rock piano, and one-and-a-half takes later, we were once again humbled by his brilliance. A great memory that I shall never ever forget.

Nicky moved to Nashville the following year, and we had one conversation during that time, when I pitched him on helping put together a book detailing his life and amazing career. He had openly shared so many stories, so many sessions, so many tours, so much history, that I knew his story needed to be documented properly.

I sent him a proposal of what it would look like, however he then explained that he had already entered the beginning phases of working with the late music biographer Ray Coleman. However Nicky passed away within a year, in 1994, and Coleman himself died two years later, nearly to the day of Nicky’s death.

Fortunately, in 2011, British singer-songwriter Julian Dawson, who had done some recording with Nicky right before his passing, published the biography, And on Piano…Nicky Hopkins.

He will always be classic rock’s greatest keyboardist in my humble opinion. And one thing I will say, in either an interview situation or more importantly in regular shooting-the-shit situations, Nicky NEVER had a bad word to say about anyone; at least to me.

He laughed easily, talked openly and candidly about his experiences—the great memories and even the “blurry” ones. He was just one of those men who didn’t seem to bother wasting energy on bad-mouthing anybody; and despite his amazing history, he was extremely humble even a bit shy at times.

A true gentleman and a spectacular talent (that I was fortunate enough to witness first-hand in the studio) is how I will always remember him.

Memorialized in 2018

Last year, Nicky’s former manager Gray Levett and stalwart fan John Wood created a crowdfunding campaign to erect a permanent memorial to this musician’s musician, in the form of a park bench designed like a piano in the area where Nicky spent his childhood.

The campaign offered the opportunity for pledgers to have their name inscribed on the bench and contribute towards funding a music scholarship at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where Nicky Hopkins himself won a scholarship in the 1950s.

Among the names who pledged to the campaign included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Ronnie Wood, Bill Wyman, Yoko Ono Lennon, Roger Daltrey, Jimmy Page, Johnnie Walker, Bob Harris and Kenney Jones.

“It’s unbelievable to think that Nicky won no awards for his stellar contribution to the music industry,” Gray Levett said in a statement. “Many fans feel, as do I, that he is the ultimate unsung rock hero and that he definitely deserves to be included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We hope this memorial will go some way towards acknowledging Nicky for his extraordinary talent. We’re hoping that his bench will find its way onto London’s rock tourist circuit, attracting fans from all over the world.”

The bench was officially dedicated in a ceremony last September. An online campaign to try and get Nicky into his rightful place within the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ended last week on September 1st. We can only hope that the Hall does the proper thing and inducts Nicky Hopkins soon.